Purdue professor to help Marion County improve inmate processing

The Marion County Sheriff's Office is enlisting the help of a Purdue University expert to improve the county's court-processing system, which, sheriff's officials said, has caused the inadvertent release of inmates who were supposed to remain in jail.

Jon Padfield, a professor in the university's College of Technology, will meet with information technology experts and criminal justice professionals today Tuesday to begin discussing any improvements needed in the processing of inmate information.

Marion County Sheriff John Layton has been under fire for the erroneous release of a spate of inmates this year.

Last June, four inmates were mistakenly released, a mistake the Sheriff's Office blamed largely on issues with converting to a new criminal justice computer system. Two of the inmates were recaptured and two others turned themselves in.

Another was mistakenly released in early August due to human error, officials said. That inmate is now in custody. Two more inmates, who are now in custody, were released two weeks ago due to what officials called a "transportation error." An internal affairs investigation on that inmate release is under way, but Katie Carlson, spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office, said on Friday that no further information on the investigation was yet available.

Padfield, who's also the president of Proffer Brainchild Analytics & Innovation, an Indianapolis-based training and consulting company, said Friday that he, along with information technology experts and representatives from the Sheriff's Office and Marion County courts, will look at each individual case of the erroneous release of inmates to determine where in the inmate-processing procedure mistakes have occurred.

"We'll look at how (the process) works today, and when it doesn't work, and where the problem is coming from," Padfield said.

In June of 2014, Marion County replaced JUSTIS, its 26-year-old court case management system, with the Odyssey system. Officials said Odyssey does not communicate directly with other systems used by law-enforcement agencies. The Information Services Agency, an IT consultant, designed a system known as DEXTER to fill the communications gap between the courts and law-enforcement agencies, the Sheriff's Office said.

The Sheriff's Office hosted an IT summit in July of software and criminal-justice experts to work on the software glitches and now is enlisting Padfield's help — and expertise in Six Sigma principles — to see whether improvements in inmate-release processes and procedures also are needed.

"This gathering of information technology experts and criminal justice professionals, under the guidance of a process improvement expert, will do a great deal to improve the process to move individuals through our criminal justice system," Sheriff John Layton said in a statement. "I am very confident that Dr. Padfield will use his expertise to guide all of us in the proper direction."

However, Emmit Carney, the GOP candidate for sheriff, has questioned in the past Layton's blaming of the switch to a new computer system for the inmate release errors.

On Friday, Carney released a statement saying that many other inmate release mistakes occurred from January 2011 to April 2014 — before the Odyssey computer system was adopted.

"There is clearly a larger problem within the Sheriff's Department than Layton is willing to admit," Carney's statement read. "In any event, it's in the public's best interest that John Layton is finally acknowledging the danger posed by his repeated failure to keep inmates in jail."

Odyssey is used by the surrounding counties of Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Morgan and Shelby. Johnson County is scheduled to adopt the system this year.

Padfield, who also teaches project management and risk management, said Friday that it's premature to say whether a new computer system will have to be created or whether existing systems will have to be identified improved to avoid future mistakes.

"We need to have a clear understanding of what's working and what's not working before we go into any discussion about how to modify it," he said.